This disclosure generally relates to systems and methods for monitoring the movements of autonomous vehicles in warehouses and factories and taking actions to avoid collisions. As used herein, the term “autonomous vehicles” includes both automated guided vehicles (AGVs) that follow a fixed path and mobile robots which do not follow a fixed path.
Autonomous vehicles are equipped with collision detection sensors but the range in which they operate is limited to their on-board sensor's coverage area. This range is commonly designed to fit a uniform area around the vehicle and payload. Typically autonomous vehicles have safety features such as proximity sensors to stop the vehicle based on programmable distance or time to a blocking object. Also, vehicle location is calculated in relation to the last known node location embedded in the path. The drawback is that the vehicle can only sense collisions within a limited range around itself and is confined to the response time due to lack of information. In addition, there could be unplanned events in high traffic areas in which autonomous vehicles must co-exist with other production activities. A current solution lacks visibility to the entire path and controls ranges that can exceed the on-board sensors specified rating. There are other issues such as non-line-of-sight obstructions beyond doorways that the vehicle sensors cannot detect. The existing solution does not provide redundancy and in many cases requires an operator or spotter to follow the vehicle with a control pendant. This option adds additional labor and creates dependency based on human judgment instead of having a carefully orchestrated automated system.